Thought people at large might be interested in the case I just filed with the Better Business Bureau about my experience with MidPhase.com.

Case ID #94041067Purchase Date: 9/18/2005Purchase Total: $183.35I purchased a hosting account with an addon "DevPack". While I did receive an activated account with access to administer the account via cPanel, I found myself unable to make permanent changes to any of the features I had paid for, whether in the basic hosting account or in the DevPack addon.

I cancelled my account twelve hours later, frustrated that I had to go through their customer support team to make basic changes to my account. I submitted my cancellation request through the MidPhase.com website on 9/19/2005.

Upon cancellation, I received a phone call from Dan (Ushman, I believe, though he didn't announce his last name during the phone call) asking why I had cancelled so soon. I explained my frustration with the midphase user interface, that I hadn't been able to achieve anything that I needed to do and that the work had been of a somewhat time-sensitive nature. He agreed, that midphase was having trouble with their web administration feature and that I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do, but that they were working on fixing the problem, and asked if I wanted to wait for the fixes. I opted to continue with the web host I had switched to on cancelling my account.

I just wanted to let you know that your account is now closed with us. If you registered a domain with midPhase, and would like to keep the registration, please reply to let me know; otherwise, the domain name will not be renewed.

Thank you for selecting midPhase, and best of luck. Please keep us in mind for your future web hosting needs!Your refund was $143.40. DevPack is not refundable.

Sorry for the double email. But I just reviewed my original order receipt and Iexpect to receive a full refund for the DevPack. There is no excusefor keeping over $40 of my money for a service I used for less than aday, more than two weeks ago, and which caused me enough stress for meto cancel my order less than 12 hours after placing it.

More fundamentally, my reason for cancelling was that the DevPack wasnot working. I was unable to add add-on domains even with the"assistance" of your customer support representatives. It isunreasonable for you to refuse me a refund for a service that you didnot provide.

Your website advertises a Risk Free Guarantee, and I took you at yourword. However, if this doesn't mean that I actually get 100% of themoney I paid to you, I will be happy to share details of my experiencewith potential customers and the internet at large.

If you are unable to take care of this request for me, please directme to the staff member at midPhase who can.

~ Cheryl

Receiving no response to this message, I called MidPhase.com and spoke to a representative named Mike, who told me he did not have the authority to handle my request. I was transferred to Mark Choi, who told me that he felt that midphase billing services had handled my request appropriately by refunding my hosting fees - that DevPack was non-refundable and that I would not be receiving a refund for it.

I explained one last time that I never received successful access to the features included in DevPack because of the system problems MidPhase was experiencing with cPanel, and that I continue to request a full refund for services I didn't receive.

He refused again, and I asked if I could speak to his supervisor. He responded that he owns the company. I expressed shock to learn that he would be willing to hang the reputation of his company on $40, and he told me that he would talk to Dan (the representative who sent me the first email response included above) about my situation and get back to me.

I would like the remainder of my payment to MidPhase, a balance of $39.95, refunded to the card I used to pay them.

no. Yo should be able to tell the CC company the details. Explain that you never received the service you're being billed for (the fact that it was off-line means, when you paid, and they didn't deliver, then you never "received" the service)...it's your CC company's job to cover your ass. ;)>

Yikes! Like your pals have said already: Credit Card banks' strongarm tactics are awesome when they're on your side. The BBB filing is good for helping your fellow man avoid this in the future, so karmic thanks.

At least I just dropped my service for being negligent, rather than face-to-face jerks.

I signed up for an account with Midphase on August 30, 2006. They suspended my account because of their internal policy that I wasn't CLEARLY made aware of when I originally signed up because I was misled to believe one thing. After many, many emails to various people in their organization and MUCH MUCHO BULLSHIT FROM THEIR STAFF IN A SPAN OF 5 MONTHS, I STILL HAVEN'T RECEIVED MY REFUND.

Check out the full account (with e-mail screenshots!) of my HORRIBLE experience with MIDPHASE here:

We gave midphase.com a try in 2006 with the 1 month Free trial.after two weeks we know that the company did not work well with our xcart shopping cart system.We called Midphase to cancel our account and they told us that they will close our account.A week later we noted that our credit card had not been refunded, so well called again and the support told us we had to submit an email requesting a closing of our account.So that is what we did, sent a email reqesting a closing.At that time we was sure, that our account was closed.But no, a year later we noted that not only they did not close our account BUT charged us for another year.We called right away as soon as we got our credit card bill and they told us that they will not refund or retro our account.There has been no Activity in that account not even a logon in two years and they know that, but all they could think about is taking our money and runing.They hide there cancellation email account deep in their terms of sale and not even hot linked you need to copy an past into you mailer system like outlook and that is the only clue in thier website to cancel.Well, we followed thier bullsh** directions and still got ripoff.I have been a webmaster for over 20 years, it's not good idea to ripoff some one like me.tntdancedesigns.com